a reflective and futile guide to life as an expat in england. formerly italy. formerly formerly korea.
but who really gives a shit anyway. are you still reading this? hello?

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

twentytoo legit to quit

The topic of getting older is kind of a prosaic one, ain't it? I mean, this is something that fundamentally happens to humans and yet when it happens to us we act as if the discussion of slowed metabolisms, sore joints, fatigue, wrinkles, and dissatisfaction with our accomplishments to date were original ideas. Age lamentation is a discourse I hear in passing so often that I can say with confidence is not limited to people who actually are older than sin, but extends also to those too young to differentiate a dick from an elbow, as my aussie friend Sinead would say. I mean, I GET IT that you're turning 22 and that's the oldest you've ever been in your life and all, ya'll, but just try and like, CALM DOWN for a second. Actually, this conversation amongst friends and acquaintances is so pervasive that I have come to the conclusion that people LIKE to talk about how old and rickety they are. they LIKE to fantasize about the nostalgia of their youth, the "youth" of course always being subjective to the individual, but nevertheless a constant entity irrespective of age. You will always have a time when you were younger and when things were different. You will always have your past as a point of comparison. I guess the lack of being able to effectively see into and experience our very own urinary and fecal incontinent diaper-wearing, disease-riddled, saggy-bodied, demented future, precludes us from being able to say "I'm 31 on my next birthday and I'm sooo young it's almost weird to think that I have enough hair on my head to necessitate an entire hairbrush."

Not trynna be anarchical or anything, but I have actually enjoyed the process of getting older and find the whole thing to be quite amusing. Last week while taking a stroll, i reached into my purse to fish out my cell phone. The contents of my bag included: a sack of Haribo assorted licorice, a bottle of Ferrari Rosé, a pack of Xanax, bottle of ibuprofen, a bag of almonds, a wet nap, pen, leatherbound journal, a tampon, my raybans, and the Pocket Medicine Handbook of Internal Medicine. The ordered chaos that is the content of my purse is the physical manifestation of why packing on the life years is just so damn fun.

Another thing, memory. I am experiencing some mild cognitive decline and I LOVE it. I don't remember stupid and irrelevant things or stupid and irrelevant people or things people said that were stupid and irrelevant. Things have to be really significant to make it into my cortex for longterm memory storage. The holes in the filter of what I remember are somehow inversely correlated to the holes that filter the nonsense that comes out of my mouth. The collateral damage is of course that I get easily sidetracked and have a tendency to forget important things like where I set down my cup of tea. The aging thing coupled with my ADD means that in my efforts to complete tasks, I accumulate new things to do, and then I forget the original task. This continues for anywhere between minutes to days. I have to make to-do lists of to-do lists. Last week I found my teacup of the day prior on the bathroom shelf above the bidet.

Which reminds me, I found a full bottle of that perfumey stuff that you dip wooden infuser sticks into and that fills the air up with a pleasant quality. I didn't have any bona fide infuser sticks so I took the last of my shish kebab sticks and dropped them in.

(has anyone seen where I left my teacup?)

.....

...Nevermind. So the other great thing about getting older is that the older you get, from the perspective of your community, the more legitimate you are considered for NOT DOING ANYTHING, meanwhile the more promptly you are forgiven and even glorified for being illegitimate. For instance, if you're 97 and you die on the dancefloor in Ibiza because you sniffed too much cocaine at a foam party, you're forever a legend. If you do the same thing at age 22 you're unlucky at best, and most likely just a moron.

The other thing I like about getting older is having the capacity to find amusement in even the most banal of life offerings. When I was 22 I would do stuff like buy a spontaneous ticket to Nicaragua and then go sandboard down a blackrock volcano wearing a neon orange jumpsuit. And you know what? Just 'cuz I did that doesn't preclude me from still riding the high from having ordered two (two!) new tufted dining room chairs three days ago (in color anthracite!). I have also become more dynamic. I still love and will always love a good music festival, but am somehow equally intoxicated by the experience of making a loaf of homemade bread at 2:00am and eating it until I pass out by myself on the kitchen floor, which is exactly what I've gotta go do right now.

So cheers to being over the age of twenty two and being too legit to quit.

5 comments:

I was listening to a podcast on the way to work the other day, because I am 30, and some lady out of context says: "You are never going to look better than you look right now." And I realized that is totally true for anyone over the age of 22.

So I bought tickets to go to Sicily and run around in a bikini next weekend, because eff it. I'm only 30.

Those dining room chairs sound divine! We just got a Le Creuset (in mandorla), and am cursing myself for doing so at the start of hot season, because that ish is not overrated at all and I love being a grownup.